What does it take to make an aeroplane crash newsworthy? To judge by the hysterical blather now emanating from Whitehall, it is not the wreckage itself nor the souls extinguished within it. It is the passport of the victims, the flag on the wreck's tail, the convenient political leverage it offers over a rival. The Air India disaster this week, which claimed over a hundred lives, has been met in the British press with little more than a mumbled obituary, a yawn, a quick shuffle to the next scandal. But now Westminster is stirred, demanding 'international aviation investigation standards' – a sudden, belated piety that reeks of imperial condescension.
Let us recall the great Victorian steamship tragedies, the Titanic even, the coverage of which could stretch for months. Why? Because the victims were 'us', our own kin, our cousins in Empire. Today, when the victims are Indian, when the airline is Indian, our newsrooms suddenly find their attention elsewhere, their emotional reserves depleted. The crash is a footnote, a nuisance. That is until the politicians scent an opportunity. The Foreign Office's call for 'standards' – a wonderful, hollow phrase – is less about safety than about brandishing a moral cudgel. It is the same impulse that leads our pundits to lecture the world on democracy while our own civic fabric rots.
History cycles. We are witnessing a late-imperial decadence in which tragedies become political tokens. The crash is not a human event; it is a bargaining chip in the game of aviation regulation. We do not mourn; we investigate. We do not weep; we file reports. And in this cold, bureaucratic response, we reveal ourselves as a civilisation that has lost its capacity for genuine grief, replacing it with a bloodless hunger for standards and protocols. It is the triumph of the spreadsheet over the soul.
We should be ashamed. But we are not. We are busy drafting demands.
